


And You Give Yourself Away

by Jaylee



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Invaders (Marvel), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: And Tony is a little jealous of Steve trying so desperately to save Namor, But it all works out in his favor, Current Avengers Run, Current Invaders Run, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Jealousy, M/M, Mentions of Previous Captain America Runs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve is working on not repressing things, Tony is all for him doing that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 20:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18431171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaylee/pseuds/Jaylee
Summary: Steve Rogers has a bit of a habit of sticking his neck (and all other limbs) out to save the Invaders when they've fallen. Tony feels this habit is detrimental to Steve's safety and sanity, particularly when bombs are involved. They argue about it, then they make up. Featuring a Steve trying really, really hard to discuss feelings without spontaneously combusting and a Tony who is a little bit jealous of Steve's priorities.





	And You Give Yourself Away

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just after Zdarsky's Invaders #4, and references to Aaron's current Avengers run. There's also some mention of Brubaker's Cap scattered throughout.

He didn’t really want to go home, but home is where his bed was, and his pillows, and the ten thousand blankets he needed in the North Pole, and all those things were a siren’s call at the moment. Well, as much as a hollowed-out shell of a Celestial could be called “home”. It was roomy, Steve would give it that, but yes, weird. Even by Avengers standard.

But, most importantly, it didn’t have to be ordinary to have a place to cocoon himself in those aforementioned blankets like a giant super soldier burrito and sleep the sleep of the bone-deep exhausted. It didn’t have to look pretty or even normal for that. Home was home no matter who was waiting there to ambush him… or maybe even  _ because _ of who was there to ambush him.

It was just… He knew what he faced when he got there. Judgement. Anger. Incredulousness. So, the chance of getting to his bed without a confrontation or two along the way were slim to none.

Same old song and dance, honestly. This was his life; these were his choices. And he’d make the same choices over (and over) again. It would just be nice if, occasionally, he got to pick and choose when his friends, and one friend, in particular, reamed him out for said choices. Preferably at 9 am, the following morning, over coffee, eggs, and toast, and after 8 hours of sleep, as was civilized.

But that wasn’t going to happen. And in all honesty, he’d probably be worried if it did.

Yet just because he never backed down from a fight; from defending what he saw as right. Just because he had a reputation, admittedly maybe slightly earned, a little bit… okay, totally and completely earned, of being the picture of abject stubbornness, didn’t mean he necessarily  _ liked _ arguing.

Steve wasn’t a complete masochist.

Just a slight one.

There were lines, okay? Jumping in the line of fire when it came to alien invasions, robot infiltration and evil cosmic cube created clones, okay, sure, he was prone to do that. Everyone needed a hobby. But arguing with the people he loved? Not nearly as fun as they make it out to be on the brochure.

When he was a kid, he thought he’d grow up to be an artist. That his only frustration in life would be not getting a line quite right. Clearly precognitive powers were not one of his particular fortes. Life was strange. He may be thirty-something in age (he had stopped keeping track after the last brush with being not-dead), but damn if, especially recently, he didn’t feel every single one of the near hundred years that had passed since his birth.

Maybe, Steve thought, as he stepped off the quinjet and into the Avengers hanger, Tony will cut him some slack. Just this once. At least let Steve get a teeny, tiny nap in before their scheduled fireworks.

But as he noticed a dark head of hair thundering toward him the minute his feet his solid ground, Steve thought, maybe not.

Clearly Tony had been actually hanging around and  _ waiting _ on him to chew him out. In a way it was kind of sweet.

Though he shouldn’t do this right now. Randall might have been closer to Namor, but he was Steve’s friend too, damnit, and he had just  _ died _ . Steve was really, really raw. And then Namor was going crazy, and it was just… a lot. Most of the people Steve knew from WW2 were dead, and those that didn’t bore the scars. They would always bear the scars.

And explaining that to anyone that wasn’t there was hard on a good day... This wasn’t one of those days.

They did this, the two of them, he and Tony. When they disagreed. They went straight from zero to a hundred, cranked up straight to lightning and earthquakes, screw anything in their path.

If the opposite of love was indifference then he and Tony truly and sincerely loved each other more than any other two people in the galaxy, because neither of them could manage indifference, ever, not even if someone held a gun to both of their heads and tried to make them. But that just made it so much harder, the feeling thing. The emotion thing. The all-encompassing edge of it. The alternative, though…

Well he was getting a first-hand look at how his life could have turned out without Tony in it courtesy of his long-time friend the Atlantean king. It wasn’t pleasant.

“They didn’t have a name for PTSD during the war, did you know that?” Steve asked in lieu of a greeting. “I mean, it was there, but they didn’t diagnosis it. They called it Battle Fatigue and General Patton thought the cure for such things was punching the inflicted in the face and calling them weaklings. Because nothing cures a hard-earned panic attack like a punch to the face, apparently. 40’s logic. I mean, I know punching solves a great deal, but absolutely I draw the line at that one.”

Tony blinked, the anger in his bright blue eyes replaced by confusion, before he asked, incredulous, “Steve, what?!”

“I’ve told you before that Patton was an asshole, Tony, most Generals were back then,” Steve told, giving Tony maybe four seconds, tops, before Tony remembered why he was angry. Steve could always distract Tony, he knew Tony to his bones, he also knew that he couldn’t manage it for very long. Four seconds was just about his record.

Tony did it in two, he was always an overachiever.

“Hey, Steve, you know who else is an asshole…”

Steve sighed. “Please don’t say it.”

“Namor!” Tony announced, loud enough to probably wake the dead Celestial they lived in. “You know, the guy threatening to kill us all with. a. bomb while you try and stop him with the power of friendship?! That guy?!”

Steve winced, all fantasies of a blanket burrito disappearing into smoke.

God but Steve was tired. If there were an Olympic category for tired, Steve would win the gold medal, of this he was certain. But damn if Tony didn’t know how to get his blood pumping, it was just which direction the blood pumped that was always the toss up with them.

“I mean, I asked you nicely not to say it,” Steve replied, and he sighed again.

Friendship. Ironic that Tony had brought it up. Considering the times friendship had saved Steve. Saved him from becoming lost, just like Namor.

Because no matter how old he got, how far removed from his youth through the passage of time, Steve knew what it was like to see a man explode. Knew what the sight of bullets piercing skin looked like. Knew how blue skin got when limbs were separated from bodies. Knew what it was like to watch friends and acquaintances you had dinner with around a campfire the night before suddenly cease to exist, and how their eyes got milky shortly after death.

The problem here was that so did Namor. They all, did, really. The Invaders, his ragtag group of misfits who suffered continuously a war that may have ended almost a century ago, but lived forever in their heads. 

Steve liked to believe in people. Wanted to believe that mankind was essentially good. He had to believe this to get out of bed in the morning. If they weren’t good, then what was the point of anything?

War. Violence. Hatred. These were obstacles to be overcome. They weren’t  _ goals _ . Goals were things like happiness and laughter and love.

The problem was that sometimes it was all too easy for a soldier, even a retired one, to be so blinded in the obstacles, they could no longer see the goals. Way too easy, especially when grief and death and more death is added into it all. Steve’s been there himself, so many times.

He should have seen a psychologist years ago to talk about the way death and destruction danced around like ghosts in his mind, forever scaring him, like a Stephen King novel on repeat. Should have gone the minute he’d woken from the ice, ideally. It was just that Steve had trust issues, what with Faustus being a thing, and mind-control so indigenous to his job. Hell, getting mind-controlled by a shrink secretly working for Red Skull was like a Tuesday in his profession. But he could have found someone, a genuinely good therapist, if he was determined enough. Bucky was seeing someone, and Bucky was in a good place these days.

But he hadn’t. And neither had Namor. Instead they’d both just learned to live in a constant state of fear.

There had been major differences though. In the trajectory of Steve’s life, to that of Namor’s.

“I wonder how lost I’d have been, back then, if you hadn’t been the one to find me,” Steve asked, more musing to himself than genuinely wanting Tony to respond. “What if I had ended up in enemy hands, like Bucky? What if I’d ended up with two back-to-back stages amnesia, one caused by a man you thought was a friend? I was lucky in how things turned out, being found by a group of people who turned out to be great and supportive friends. You. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.”

...Since his good friend Jim had called and said, in so many words:  _ there is something wrong with our friend Namor _ , if Steve were to pinpoint an exact moment.

Tony looked horrified for a split second at Steve’s implication. Then his face corrected to an expression more naturally Tony, one that indicated he was just as capable of unadulterated stubbornness as Steve, and lord but they were a pair, the two of them. So, so much alike for all that one was a futurist and the other a man of the past.

This is how they danced, he and Tony, this was how they challenged each other to be their very best, and sometimes, unfortunately, their worst. They faced the world as if it were a firing squad and the very fabric of the space/time continuum relied solely on one getting the other to agree on the very best means of dodging bullets, because if ever there was a pair that  _ could _ dodge bullets, and do it like an absolute boss at that, it would be the two of them.

Steve really did love Tony with all his battered, bruised and broken heart.

“Steve, no matter who had found you, you would always, at your core, be who you are, a good man. The best.”

Tony said this with such pure, and fervent conviction, it was like he was daring Steve to contradict him just so Tony could shoot him down, again.

Steve had to smile at that, touched despite the dourness of his day.

Yeah, compared to the other Invaders, he really had won the post WW2, waking up in modern times, lottery. Sad that being frozen in ice and time displacement was actually a best-case scenario, but there it was.

Sadder yet, though...

“You know that year I was gone, in that other place, and that other me was here running amok?”

He couldn’t look at Tony as he asked it, had to look away. No matter how old he got, the subject of what a cosmic cube created Hydra version of him had done in his stead would always be a touchy and guilt-ridden topic, just as the great war itself would always be. Problem was, these things needed to be talked about.

Why was it that the hardest things to talk about were always the ones that needed to be discussed the most?

“He wasn’t you, Steve, not your fault,” Tony repeated, for probably the hundredth time in so many months.

It was important to Tony that Steve understand this, Steve knew.

And it was important to Steve that Tony would always try.

“Where I was during all of that, the Vanishing Point,” Steve continued, because he needed to, or he never would. A man like him didn’t die in the sea, they just turned to ice and drifted, but damn if feelings weren’t the things that robbed the air from his lungs.

“I didn’t remember who I was. I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t know friend or foe. I did my best but, it was frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever been more frightened.”

“I can imagine that was hard, I’ve had black-out periods before, too,” Tony said, after a weighted silence. But Steve just shook his head.

“It’s not that so much as that even then, I had Bucky coming to get me out of there, had an AI version of you, and also Sam, and Clint waiting for me on the other side with a warm hello,” Steve replied, halfway in wonderment, halfway in horror. “Hell, the first thing your other you said to me when I tried to explain that it wasn’t me, that I’d never do any of those things, was  _ ‘we know it wasn’t, it’s good to have you back, Cap’ _ .”

The only thing more frightening than not having any memories, or any sense of self, was the absolute faith of a friend. Sometimes Steve wanted to scream under the weight of it. Yet he also clung to it like a lifeline.

Where would Steve be without it? Did he even want to know the answer to that question?

Namor had had to answer it. Namor had been left alone with the ghosts of WW2. They had all left him, the Invaders. Steve hadn’t meant to, though, he honestly hadn’t and wouldn’t have by choice, he wouldn’t have left any of them.

And the Peterson’s, Randall’s family, didn’t turn out to be the help Namor needed, though they meant well and were good people. But they’d dealt with Namor’s PTSD, and Xavier inflicted brain damage, by pretending Namor was fine, which wasn’t a help at all.

“Steve, no one is saying that Namor didn’t have a raw deal,” Tony began carefully. “I’m sure waking up from amnesia, to Johnny Storm of all people, who, let’s just put this out there, is not the most uh…  _ sensitive _ , of all of us, was very frightening. And the text you sent about Xavier, that’s something. I mean, I believe it, but wow, not good. At all. And I’m sure WW2 left its scars. I see the effects it had on you every day and it kills me. But Namor is still responsible for his choices, and he’s made some very, very bad ones. I won’t bring up the Incursions, I don’t have to, so let’s just look at the present situation here as an example... he’s building a  _ bomb _ , Steve...”

“Not saying that isn’t true, Tony, but… I think he’s lost in the obstacles; I really think he is,” Steve said, and he didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that because he didn’t need to. He knew Tony to his bones, this was true, but so, too, did Tony know him. “I’ve seen Namor risk his neck to save people, I’ve seen him try so, so hard to repress all the loss we experienced back then. I think, the repressing thing? He just became way too good at it, when he even remembered who he was, that is. And it ate him alive. He didn’t have a you, like I did, reminding him to be present in the now, for all the flack I give you for it. Randall ignored the darkness in Namor, he didn’t challenge it. Namor needed someone to challenge it, and then to tell him it would be okay.”

Steve finally looked back up, met Tony’s eyes. Tony was shaking his head, and in his eyes was sadness. So much sadness. Steve wanted to die a little.

“You and your hard luck cases,” Tony said, somewhat bitterly. Steve flinched. “Bucky, back when he was the Winter Soldier. Namor. You jump headfirst into saving them. Give your everything, every single piece of yourself. Push the rest of us out of the way, those of us who care about you. Even as it kills you on the inside to do it, extrapolates your guilt and heightens your profound sense of responsibility - more than can logically be your fair share of it - you do it. I hate watching you do it. I hate it! Sure, it turned out well with Bucky and I’m grateful to know him, he’s a good friend. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a horror show at the time. Doesn’t mean it’s not a horror show now.”

Okay, so that was fair, Steve knew this in the rational part of his brain. Didn’t mean it was easy to hear, though. Steve squelched, with considerable effort, the retort of  _ ‘well, I’m so sorry I inconvenience you’ _ because that wasn’t the point he wanted to make here, and it wouldn’t be productive. Steve wasn’t the only one in this room who cared about people to their own detriment and sanity, if he and Tony were going to play pot and kettle. But that wasn’t the point he wanted to make, either.

“If I didn’t, who else? Everyone deserves a chance, deserves a champion. Hell, everyone deserves to know someone cares enough to fight for their soul. I was lucky, when you found me, I had you. I was never allowed alone with my demons too long without you bursting into my room presenting a worthy distraction, a purpose. Not everyone can claim the same,” he said instead, because seriously, that was the crux of it, wasn’t it?

And then he added, because there was an elephant in the room, and if Steve was going to set a goal of being better in not repressing things, he might as well get this final thing out there, at last.

“You’re jealous.”

This time it was Tony who laughed. Angry and incredulous. His blue eyes flashing.

“That just now dawn on you?” Tony asked rhetorically, bitterly. And Steve shook his head. He’d known. He’d always known. Zero to a hundred, that was he and Tony. They never did anything by halves. They certainly didn’t  _ love _ by halves, either. That’s why the elephant had been there, unvoiced, for a decade now. They were  _ afraid _ of it. They both were. Though admittedly, brave as Steve liked to consider himself, probably more so him than Tony.

There were scarier things, though, Steve realized. Like not having someone to find him when he was lost.

“I. am. so. jealous,” Tony announced, slowly and with the force of a tidal wave behind it, proving just how unafraid he now was, how bold, how angry. “You give out pieces of yourself like candy - and I’m still not sure if Namor even deserves it - and always leave me with the wrapper. And through it all here I am, wondering if it's going to kill you. Again. Do you have any idea what it is like to admire these incredible traits in the man you love, this extreme loyalty, but also resent them with a passion because each time - each and every time - you lose him further to whatever goes on in that head of his that he won't share?!”

Steve felt his eyes water. He’d done this to Tony, done this to them, he hadn’t meant to. The Invaders with their assorted levels of PTSD, the war, and anything associated with it, they were simply his problems, that was how he saw it. He didn’t like to burden others with it. 

He didn’t like to burden others, period. 

He’s spent a childhood feeling like a burden on his poor, overworked, widowed mother, not that she’d ever referred to him as such, she was a great mom. But it wasn’t hard to draw that conclusion for himself when he was always sick, and coming home with black eyes from bullies, while she worked three jobs just to feed him. He used to, irrationally, fear that one day she would just up and decide he wasn’t worth all the grief. But she never did. Instead she had done everything she could to take care of him until it killed her.

Steve didn’t need anyone else dying taking care of him, thank you. But him taking care of  _ other _ people until it killed  _ him _ was perfectly fine.

…. It was possible, upon reflection, that he was fucked up from more than just the war and everything that happened post-ice. There might be a little left over from before all of that… just maybe…

...oh god, he was his mother’s son. Steve had always known that to be true, his mother had been the best person he had known, he  _ strove _ to be like her, but w-o-w, he just put that all together.

But he hadn’t meant, he’d  _ never _ meant, to make Tony feel that the past held a stronger hold on him than the future.

He had to come clean.

Steve felt the air leave his lungs, suffocating him, just like he always knew emotions could. But for Tony he could face this, for Tony he’d take the plunge even scarier than what he was facing in saving Namor, or what he’d been facing when saving Bucky. It was time to own up. To let go of some of the shadows in his mind. Tony deserved that much.

“It is impossible,” Steve began, choked with it and stumbling, “that you’re left with the wrapper when you carry some of the best parts of me with you. The part of me who is capable of anything when I’m with you, with no challenge seeming insurmountable. The part of me you challenge. The part of me that you awake, the parts of me you set afire. The part of me that feels safe when with you, so safe, and the part of me that wants to make others feel safe in return because of your example. Tony, you’re  _ home _ . That’s the best part of everything. I’m sorry if I take it for granted. I don’t mean to. I love you.”

Steve was panting, his chest heaving, as if he were still a skinny, pre-serum asthmatic who’d just run a dash. But the thing that gave him hope, was that so was Tony. Because there Tony was, looking stunned and five seconds short of a panic attack, but struggling to hold it together, like the world couldn’t break him. For all their differences…

Yet, the good news was; that was done now. And it hadn’t been so hard. He’d confessed, laid it all out. He’d actually released the words that have been trapped on his tongue for  _ years _ . He was free of it now. It was beautiful in its release. Tony knew it all now, unequivocally.

So. It was nice. This whole sharing thing. Lord knows he didn’t want to make a habit out of it or anything, a man’s got to have  _ some _ secrets. But still, great to have this particular secret laid bare. Very great. Euphoric, even.

Tony was shaking, a little. Eyes welled shiny with salt water. He was stunning in it. So stunning.

Silence hung between them, but it wasn’t oppressive. Steve was shedding the oppressive parts of himself. At least, he was trying to. There was no room for the heavy kind of silence here, no sir.

He watched, in fascination, as Tony collected himself enough to speak, voice just as raspy as Steve’s had been when finally managing it.

“You get one week to talk Namor out of being a dick,” Tony stated, and Steve had to laugh, in actual amusement this time. Because, yeah, Namor was a dick, bless him. But that was okay; Namor was his brother anyway, whether he liked it or not. “And then you’re going to come home, and I’m going to show you exactly what ten years of unresolved sexual tension feels like when it is finally released, here, in our home, that we made  _ together _ , by my fucking you into the mattress. You think I set you afire now? You haven’t seen anything yet, soldier.”

Steve shivered, picturing it, wanting it.

“And afterwards,” Tony continued, softer, eyes fond, “I’ll explain, in exquisite detail, how you’re home to me, too.”

“That is such a great plan,” Steve proclaimed, honestly. Because it really, really was. Best plan he’d ever heard, in fact. And Steve was Captain America, he knew plans.

“I know,” Tony replied, proud of himself.

“When we do this,” Steve inputted, because zero to a hundred, that was them, and they should probably acknowledge that, too, “we’re probably going to need marriage counseling. Lots and lots of marriage counseling. Our life, it’s weird. I mean, if you ever want to sit back and contemplate how weird, just remember the fact that we live in a dead Celestial. The same Celestial, I might add, who’s blood and, uh, virus we’ve seemingly evolved from. I mean, not to cast aspersions, but even knowing all of that is a little fucked up and that’s not even going into the circumstances of  _ how _ we gained that little tidbit of knowledge.”

Tony laughed, loud and genuine and delighted. It filled the room with happiness. Then he walked up to Steve, grabbed lose bits of chainmail across his chest with two fists, and pulled Steve to him bodily, challenge alit in his eyes as the heat between them fanned to flame, like it was want to do.

Generating heat, Steve thought, this was how they rolled, he and Tony, Tony and Steve, and heat was so, so much better than the cold.

As Tony’s face grew closer to his, barely a breath away, and Steve became transfixed by the dilation of Tony’s eyes, his heart beating so loudly he could hear it.

“I’m game if you are,” Tony dared him.

And as Tony’s lips met his, and as Steve’s eyes closed by their own volition, he thought, rather than said “Challenge, accepted.”

But he was sure Tony got the general gist of it through Steve’s application of tongue.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I haven't been a part of fandom for awhile (long story involving work firewalls due to system upgrades, and older cell phone models that couldn't be replaced right away because of google authenticator, but could no longer handle the Tumblr app, and then the peace and serenity discovered from Tumblr no longer being accessible while all of this was going on... Turns out, fandom is a bit toxic and anxiety inducing, who knew?!) and probably don't even know anyone in it anymore so this is unbeta'd. Sorry for the mistakes, for which I have no doubt are many. 
> 
> But, while all of this has been going on, I have been keeping on-top of all the current comics involving the great love of my (and Tony's) life, Steve Rogers, and felt compelled to write this because I couldn't not. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading. :)


End file.
